💌 Welcome to Issue #9 of Thought Shot - a weekly newsletter with 'How-To' Lessons for becoming Purpose-Driven Leaders. You can expect to read about my experiments, learnings and stories sprinkled with helpful tools and frameworks.
Today I talk about my mistakes in setting annual resolutions + experiments with personal goal-setting frameworks + my learnings along the way.
Make sure to not miss my next essay -
That Time of The Year
It's January again! The month of new beginnings.
We are all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. We all imagine that a chapter of our lives ended. And now we can restart and rebuild ourselves in a new way. We have reflected on our past year and set up ambitious resolutions for ourselves.
Unsurprisingly though, most of them might be broken much before the sun sets on the month. Oops, sorry for raining on your parade!
Up to a few years ago, I too used to set New Year Resolutions and break up with them within the first few weeks. My resolutions varied over the years too. From eating less junk food to reading more books. From being less stressed to traveling more. From being more of myself to trying to be more like others. It was a colorful bouquet of resolutions.
On the work front, I would always hit my goals and more. But on the personal side, it was a different story. I could just never make enough time for myself or my personal resolutions.
So only one thing happened each year - either I ended up only partially achieving my personal resolutions or none at all.
But it's all different now.
Thinking back on 2021
I started 2022 with a little family hike up the mountains. Trust me, no revelation smacked me in the face while climbing up. It was mostly me huffing and puffing while trying to let the little one not fall down.
But as we sat in the beautiful early morning mist surrounding us, I ended up thinking about who I am and what I want to be.
In 2021, I had planned to focus on writing as one of my personal goals. It had seemed ambitious to me while working a full-time job and managing an energetic preschooler.
However, by the end of the year, I ended up setting a personal writing routine. I wrote essays on impact and leadership for 15+ publications. I had some posts that went semi-viral (like this one) and one that got featured by LinkedinForCreators. I started my own newsletter and even set up a personal website as a home for my writing.
This was not exactly where I wanted to land by the end of the year, but I was definitely much farther along from where I had started.
So How Did I Make This Change?
One day a conversation with a close friend changed it all for me. While we were creating the annual plan for our business line, she said -
If only, we could set direction for our personal lives like this?
While she meant it more as a joke, it was my personal lightbulb moment. Amidst the professional hustle, I had somehow missed applying work learnings to my personal context.
It made me realize what my resolutions were missing - concrete GOALS and ACTIONS.
And that was a turning point for me. Over the last few years now, I make sure to not just think of resolutions, but rather set goals for myself.
Intentional goals. Outcome-based goals. Action-oriented goals.
I would be kidding if I say I end up reaching all my personal goals every year. Life gets in the way, of course!
But I definitely started ending up much closer to the goalpost I had set out for myself at the beginning of the year. And more importantly, I intentionally ended up in a much different place than where I had started the year. And that is what matters to me.
What did I learn in the process? Let me share that with you.
Making Personal Goals Real
I am a PowerPoint and frameworks person. So no surprise that over the years, I have experimented with various goal-setting frameworks - at work as well as in my personal life.
I am going to share two of my go-to goal-setting frameworks today. I am not going to go into too much detail on the frameworks themselves, since I am sure you can find a ton of resources online. What I will talk about instead is how I used them in my personal context and my own learnings.
S.M.A.R.T
This is perhaps the most commonly used framework for goal setting. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. At work, I have used it for setting team goals as well during project scoping with the client.
For setting personal goals, here is how I have experimented with it in the past -
My goal is to [do X] by [timeframe]. I will accomplish this goal through [Actions A B C]. Accomplishing this goal will help me in [specific benefit].
Some quick examples.
My goal is to read 25 nonfiction books this year. I will accomplish this goal by reading 2 or more books every month spanning 12 diverse themes. Accomplishing this goal will help me enhance my knowledge, reduce stress and improve concentration.
My goal is to build connections with impact professionals this year. I will accomplish this by having conversations with 5 new people every month across types of sectors, organizations, and levels of experience. Accomplishing this goal will help me build my network for new partnerships, learnings, and growth.
To set up these SMART Goals, here are the five key questions I reflected on-
What do I want to accomplish and what steps do I want to take? (Specific)
How will I know I reached the finish line? (Measurable)
Is this something I can reasonably accomplish? (Achievable)
Why am I setting this goal for myself? (Relevant)
By when do I want to reach my goal? (Time-bound)
My two cents: This framework helped me structure and quantify what I wanted to achieve. It helped me set a broad timeline as well. However, I faced two challenges.
One, I was not comfortable with how to decide whether or not a personal goal was ‘achievable’. I wondered whether I should be pushing myself to create moonshot goals? Or should I aim for roof shot goals that I know I could hit easily? Two, this was not an outcome-first framework. So, while it helped me quantify a goal I wanted to chase, it didn’t help me pinpoint a clear outcome I was trying to drive for myself.
O.K.R
O.K.R stands for Objectives and Key Results. This is a popular framework for team goal setting in large organizations (like Intel, Google, and other Silicon Valley giants).
Here is how I set up single sentence personal OKR for myself -
I will (Objective) as measured by (this set of Key Results).
One quick example.
Objective: I will improve my physical fitness this year as measured by -
Result Area 1 - Walking at least 5000 steps every day.
Result Area 2 - Sleeping 8 hours at least 5 times a week
Result Area 3 - Drinking 3 liters of water every day
I started by setting an objective that I found inspiring. And then to keep track of whether or not I reach my objective, I identified specific result areas (ideally quantifiable and not more than 3).
My two cents: This framework somehow works a lot more for me in a personal context. It helps me identify clear results in shorter goal cycles. What I did is that I kept my objective fixed for the year but I modified my result areas every 3 months. For example - I pushed my daily step target from 5000 to 7000 midway through the year once I was hitting this result area consistently.
I did another modification to personalize this framework for myself. I separated my committed OKRs (attainable goals) vs. aspirational OKRs (stretch goals). This helped me manage my motivation as well as expectations. I could see that I was making progress without getting overwhelmed.
But, Only Goals are Not Enough
I realized early on (from many past failed attempts) that only setting personal goals is not enough, no matter which framework is used.
So here are five actions that acted as companions for my goals:
1. Setting up Micro-Habits
After reading a lot about habit building and goal setting, I figured out my personal magic mantra to get moving. I needed to set up micro habits. The basic idea is to set up a recurring action in the day associated with another key action, such that it ultimately becomes a part of your habits intuitively.
Simple examples would be drinking a glass of water immediately after waking up, going for a walk immediately after dinner, and writing first thing in the morning immediately after waking up. This is a fabulous technique (the backstory and technique are for another day). But I observed that micro habits became a subconscious part of my day after approx. a month of conscious effort.
2. Setting up Visual Reminders and Aids
Have you heard the saying - out of sight, out of mind? It is true for goals and resolutions as well. One of the tricks that worked for me was ensuring that little things reminded me to keep working towards the goals.
When I was working on my health goals, I bought a new water bottle and kept it right in front of me on the desk. When I was working on my writing goals, I bought pretty new notebooks and kept them handy (on my desk, in my bag etc.). I could then write down quick ideas as and when they hit me. When I was working on my learning goals, I bought a comfortable pair of earphones to listen to books and podcasts.
3. Experimenting to Find What Sticks
Not everyone likes the same flavor of ice cream, books, or TV shows. Why would behaviors be different? To stick to my plans, I experimented with different processes, techniques, hacks as well. I tried out different actions at different times of the day, with/without music, with/without people. I tried them all for about a week and consciously observed to see what worked and what didn’t.
4. Tracking and Measuring
Like I have said before, I am a list(s) and to-do(s) person, so most of the time I kept track of my micro habits. Health and sleep goals are easier to track on fitness bands and smartphones now. For others, I track them on my color-coded Notion.
Even if you are not as neurotic as me to maintain trackers, you can always keep a small habit calendar at your desk or just be mindful of your actions. More importantly, I would reward myself for hitting specific milestones each week. Simple things like a cheat meal or a late Netflix night.
5. Finding support
One of the best ways to hold myself accountable was when I found partners for my goals. I sometimes did this by tag-teaming with a buddy with similar goals. I even found virtual communities with like-minded people. Seeing others making progress inspired me to keep going as well.
Hope this helps you as you set your own goals for this year.
As for me, I have set up my 2022 goals too.
Who knows where I will land by the end of the year. All I hope is that I am able to move further along on my path.
That’s all for today folks. Now, go shine!
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